In the wake of the news.

Baylor Determined To Teach Cubs Pain-gain Formula

March 04, 2001|By Skip Bayless.

He's there every morning, for the entire hour, in the second or third row of Cubs. He does every excruciating contortion his players are pushed to do. For a 51-year-old bear of a man, all neck and chest and biceps, this is seam-ripping torture. At times it almost looks as if Don Baylor is trying to give birth.

In a way, he is. He is trying to summon all his war-horse will, all his playoff and World Series history in Baltimore, California, Boston, Minnesota, Oakland, Colorado and Atlanta, and give birth to a belief no manager ever has been able to instill at Wrigley Field. Baylor is trying to convince the Chicago Cubs, baseball's poison ivy, they can become lovable winners.

Imagine Baylor about to grapple with an opponent that outweighs him by 93 years. For once you don't like his chances.

It's as if every Cub fan was born in 1908, the last time the team won a World Series. Ever since, a nationwide cult has grown by the blown lead. To join, one need only expect the worst and revel in losing, the more excruciating, the better. There will be joy in Dudville if mighty Baylor strikes out.

Baylor seethes at this tradition. Baylor knows it seeps into the psyches of players who come to the Cubs believing in ghosts and curses and ivy-strangled history that tightens around their throats every time they pick up a paper or flip on a sportscast. Baylor has been part of winning nearly everywhere he played, coached or managed. Just lucky? No, his intimidating presence and feel for winning also contributed to his amazing resume.

So Don Edward Baylor figured, by sheer force of 250-pound will, he could stare down Cub history last year, his first as manager. He had no idea what he was up against.

Baylor admits he "got fooled" by his bullpen through a rose-colored spring. Baylor, one of only 12 players to hit 250 or more homers and steal 250 or more bases, took another beating when he spoke openly about helping turn Sammy Sosa into the complete player Sosa's idol, Roberto Clemente, was. Sosa sulked. Through a hopeless second half of the season Sosa gave fans what they crave: photo-album homers in a losing cause. Sosa won. Baylor lost.

Through September, as Baylor's Cubs fell toward 65-97, his constant thought while mumbling through post-loss interviews was: "It's expected for the Cubs to lose. But that will change."

Forty-one major- and minor-leaguers who opened camp with Baylor a year ago are gone. Forty-one, including Mark Grace, who taught so many young Cubs how to lose gracefully. Baylor wanted to "change the face" of the Cubs. Second baseman Eric Young is moving into Grace's locker and leadership role. Young, who played college football at Rutgers, plays baseball the way Baylor manages it. "E.Y." attacks.

Now Baylor is trying to insulate high-strikeout Sosa with contact hitters and base-stealers. This way Sammy can do his thing while Baylor does his, starting runners, pressuring the defense, making things happen instead of letting them.

But Baylor's most risky and perhaps desperate move was giving old friend Mack Newton the first hour and 15 minutes of every spring-training day. Newton is one of the most impressive men Baylor knows, a tall, powerful seventh-degree martial artist who began his first-day presentation by "breaking a couple of bricks" just to show big-leaguers he won't take any guff, even at 52.

Newton is a fitness evangelist who stretches the mind as he does the body. His remarkably grueling yoga-like session, usually done to gentle R&B music, is followed by a 15-minute talk on some aspect of why teams win. Participant Baylor believes this shared pain promotes "mental toughness and team unity." He's especially pleased Sosa has enthusiastically joined in such a lengthy and rigorous program, at least so far.

Newton preaches Baylor's "mission statement"--worst to first. "People probably snicker," Baylor said. "But Kevin Tapani was on a team that did it [the '91 Twins], so it [makes sense] to him."

People definitely snicker at Baylor's bullpen, which is only slightly improved. "A piece of the puzzle yet to be completed," he said. But the biggest piece--the culture of losing--Baylor has tackled chest-first.

He might find he needs to change the Cubs' uniforms, nickname and even address before he can overcome 93 years. But he beats on, a tugboat against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.